May 8, 2008...9:13 am
Editorial Tells Faculty to Move On
I’m fairly fond of The Register-Herald in Beckley, W.Va. It’s where I received my start as a writer working part time in the sports department. I learned a lot about what you can and cannot do as a writer working for that newspaper.
However, an editorial published in today’s paper might be the worst that I have read. Not because it tells faculty and others at WVU to move on and that WVU President Mike Garrison is not going anywhere. It is poorly written in that the argumentative style is not one you would expect to find in an editorial, but more like a heated discussion in which the one writing feels as if he has to defend himself for his views.
Take for instance this statement,
Hopefully, Monday’s session made those members of the faculty feel better. They got up in front of their colleagues and the media spotlight, many denounced Garrison and referred to the academic crime that was perpetrated and that WVU’s image would be tarnished until the president stepped down. They can keep on with the criticism as long as they want, but they better get out the silver polish to rub out the stains because all of their verbalization still isn’t going to change the name on the desk plate at Stewart Hall.
It’s uncalled for to claim that faculty used the meeting Monday only to seek the media spotlight. It shows a complete lack of understanding of higher education and faculty. For faculty, academic integrity is the most important thing for an institution. I cannot disagree. (Sorry, college athletics are not everything on a college campus.) Faculty had every right to make the moves that it did, regardless of how it voted. What has been wrong is the treatment faculty at WVU have received from the state’s political leaders and in this editorial.
A black eye, sure, but black eyes heal.
This is more than a black eye. Institutional situations like these force faculty to leave. Sure, you may argue that faculty are easy to replace and who wouldn’t want to teach at WVU in the mountains of West Virginia. What many learn when they make those statements is that some professors are hard and if not impossible to replace, as my own master’s degree institution has learned.
Perhaps in time the faculty and alums will move on. However, media in West Virginia must understand and begin to understand that this is a serious charge that was levied against WVU and its academic leaders. It’s reputation is soiled and it may take years for it to recover in the eyes of its peers. And that’s just not something you can “spit out the bad taste and move on” about easily.
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